Mobile stations such as smartphones and media players are expected to execute user applications of increasing sophistication. The user applications executed in such device have different levels of security, qualities of service, and memory access and storage requirements, to name a few processing considerations, and often must be executed concurrently. Not surprisingly, these mobile stations are being designed with powerful low-power processors.
Adding to these processing considerations is that the devices often include one or more sensors, or at least sensor data applications, for monitoring and processing physical conditions in the surrounding environment. For example, the devices might be expected to execute sensor data-based applications such as health monitoring, seismic data analysis and monitoring, weather data analysis and monitoring, disruption in secure data transmission, and disruption in secure energy transmission.
FIG. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of mobile station 101 in the prior art. Device 101 comprises sensors 1 through M, wherein M is a positive integer, analog-to-digital (A/D) converter 104, processor 106, memory 108, and network transceiver 110, interconnected as shown. Sensors 102-1 through 102-M each monitor a different physical condition in an environment. A/D converter 104 converts the analog sensor data into digital data, to be processed by processor 106 and stored in memory 108. Some or all of the processed data are then transmitted by network transceiver 110 through a telecommunications network to another node, such as a user workstation or another post-processing station.
In order to adequately process the incoming sensor data, mobile station 101 must continuously convert the sensor data from analog signals to digital data, packetize and transport raw digitized sensor data over complex platform fabric, process the data in processor 106, and store the raw and/or processed data in memory 108. The processing burden on processor 106 can be excessive, as well as the requirement on the electrical power source. Therefore, the need exists for an improved power management technique, particularly in the presence of sensor data processing.